Additive Manufacturing for the Railway

The railway industry benefits significantly from additive manufacturing by enabling the production of specialised, durable parts on demand, ensuring continuous operation with minimal downtime. With AM, replacement parts, components for locomotives, and even entire sections of track infrastructure can be manufactured quickly and efficiently.

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Benefits

Customisable Design Flexibility: Easily produce intricate and specific designs for rail components not possible with traditional methods. ...
Reduced Lead Times: Manufacture prototypes and production parts faster, maintaining the reliability of rail operations. ...
Durable and Lightweight Solutions: Additive manufacturing offers parts that withstand heavy use while minimising weight, enhancing fuel efficiency.
On-Demand Part Replacement: Quickly create replacement parts to minimise train downtime and avoid long procurement cycles. ...
Cost and Waste Reduction: Minimise material waste, particularly valuable in long-lasting railway equipment. ...
Lower Environmental Impact: Reduce carbon footprint through localised and on-demand production.

Real World 3D Printing Success Story

HSB: Maintenance of historic steam locomotives

HSB is the largest service provider for public transportation in eastern Germany. They use the state-of-the-art 3D scanning technology of the ZEISS T-SCAN hawk 2 to ensure that their steam locomotives run non-stop and that their traditional drives are preserved for the future. Accurate 3D models of the machines support the maintenance, repair and overhaul – keeping a part of German history alive in the Harz mountains.

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Kimya PEKK-SC: the solution adopted by ALSTOM

ALSTOM Italy had a production bottleneck. It lacked a PEEK cotter pin to complete the production of a rotating electric train engine with a permanent magnet. The non-availability of a plastic raw material caused lengthier delivery lead times, disrupting the train delivery schedule of ALSTOM for its customer.

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A Professional 3D Printer in an Industrial Setting: Pro2 Used for Transportation Engineering

A common belief about 3D printing is that helpful industrial 3D printers are too expensive to purchase and maintain. However, this is not true. Raise3D demonstrates this point in a recent interview with one of our clients, a 3D printer farm called 2050.AT. 2050.AT is part of a division of the Transmashholding/Lokotech Group of Companies, the largest Russian manufacturer of railway equipment.

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